Planning to Buy A Juicer? This Guide Will Help You Make The Right Choice

If you have health on your mind and the heat is getting the better of you, it is time to switch to juices to hydrate your body and get your dose of nutrients from fresh fruits and vegetables. An efficient juicer can make your life easier—besides juices, you can also make cold soups and irresistible cocktails in it. Here are some tips to help you make the right choice:

Types of Juicers

There are four types of juicers currently available in the market—manual, centrifugal, cold press and USB electric bottle blender.

Hand juicer: Super easy to use and designed for quick and efficient juicing, hand juicers or manual juicers work on the simple premise of adding the fruit or vegetable in the feeder and then manually moving the push handle to extract the juice. The juice extracted comes with the pulp so the nutritional value is intact. A hand juicer is great for juicing soft, pulpy fruits such as orange, pineapple, grapes, sweet lime, watermelon, pomegranate, spinach, tomato and mango. Manual juicers are compact, noise-free, easy to clean and store, and cost-effective, which makes them a popular buy even today.

Centrifugal juicer: These juicers have more juice, quite literally. Powerful and effective for dense foods, such as apple, carrots, beetroot, radish and so on, these high-speed juicers work on the principle of centrifugal force. A metal blade spins against a filter and separates the juice from the flesh. Fast and efficient, they can be a little noisy and are known to heat up when used for long. Another downside is that some of the nutrients in the foods are lost during processing.

Cold press juicer or masticating juicer: These are slower as compared to centrifugal juicers and have a gentler extraction process of first crushing and then pressing the foods. You get a more pulpy juice full of nutrients that also tastes better. They yield more juice too. Because these juicers are slower, they are much quieter and don’t produce as much heat as a centrifugal juicer. These juicers tend to take more counter space in the kitchen.  

USB electric bottle blender: Perfect for getting one or two glasses of juice quickly, this portable juicer is ideal for people who like to enjoy fresh fruit juice while on the go. Shaped like a bottle, these blenders run on batteries or electricity and are rechargeable via USB hubs. They are lightweight, portable and easy to store. They work better on soft fruits, such as banana, kiwis, strawberries.

Some other things to consider

When buying a juicer, other than its type and make, here are some things you must keep in mind.

Power wise: Before buying a juicer, consider the kind of juices you prefer having and the capacity of the machine. For example, if a vegetable juice is your go-to drink in the morning, then go for a more powerful juicer. A juicer with at least 400 watts of power can do the job efficiently. If you prefer a more fibrous fruit juice, then you could opt for a manual or cold press juicer. Also, check the capacity of the gadget depending on the amount of juice you would need every day—single serve or more.

Heat: This is important and should be a cause of concern because a juicer that operates at a higher speed causes more friction. This results in high temperatures inside, leading to oxidization of the nutrients and fibre in the fruits and vegetables. Slow juicers, on the other hand, don’t produce as much heat and therefore retain the essential nutrients of the foods.

Convenience: Pick a juicer that’s easy to clean. You don’t want to struggle for hours, trying to get the food particles out of the corners. Go for a juicer with a wide feeding tube that prevents clogging, produces more juice and is easy to clean. Most manual juicers are super easy to wash and maintain. All you need to do is unscrew the parts, which is fairly intuitive, and then rinse the juicer.